'Sleeping Beauty' isn’t the lead of her own story—her fairy godmothers are

The Princess Diaries #3: Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Aug 21, 2025

In “The Princess Diaries,” pop culture critic Caroline Siede reexamines the Disney princess legacy one film at a time. This essay is free but to get the full Girl Culture experience —including my rom-com column—you can become a paid subscriber.

“You’re a prince and you’re going to marry a princess.”
“Now, father, you’re living in the past. This is the 14th century!”

One of the misconceptions people have about old movies is that they weren’t self-aware. That the ability to acknowledge and play around with tropes is something we only learned to do in “modern times” and that anything made before, say, the 1990s was just mindlessly, earnestly regurgitating cultural norms. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Back in 1959, for instance, Disney was already riffing on what it meant to be a “Disney princess”—although not in the way you might expect.

In fact, Sleeping Beauty a.k.a. Aurora a.k.a. Briar Rose is probably the princess who best fits the stereotype of the young, passive, naïve heroine that Disney has gotten so much flack for over the years. But that’s because she’s ultimately just a minor supporting player in the tale that bears her name. The actual protagonists of Sleeping Beauty are pretty much a direct refutation of the template set by Snow White and Cinderella: They’re three short, rotund, sassy middle-aged women who can’t cook, clean, or sew to save their lives and instead use their minds and their magic to save the day—fairies Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.

There’s a reason that when Disney went to make a live action remake of Sleeping Beauty, it shifted the focus to another magical maternal figure in Maleficent. Aurora herself has never been the most interesting thing about her own film. And recognizing that fact is the best way to appreciate what the 1950s classic has to offer, as opposed to what it’s lacking.

Indeed, Sleeping Beauty holds an interesting place in the Disney animated canon. Walt Disney envisioned it as his studio’s magnum opus, which is part of why he placed Sleeping Beauty Castle as the central icon of Disneyland when the park opened in 1955. After a decade of filmmaking that included classics like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty was meant to push the art of animation forward with its tapestry-inspired look, widescreen multiplane process, and mature Tchaikovsky score. Only it opened to mixed reviews and a lackluster box office, at least compared to its lavish $6 million budget. (It was Disney’s most expensive film to date.)

Though Sleeping Beauty has since been reclaimed as a classic, I get where that mixed response is coming from. While there are scenes I absolutely adore (especially the “Once Upon a Dream” sequence), it’s probably my least favorite of these first three classic princess films. Sleeping Beauty had a long, uneven production history, as the studio struggled to figure out how to make it feel distinct from their two previous fairy tale princess adaptations. And while they settled on a compellingly epic scope, the film also feels a bit overthought—gorgeous in its aesthetics but with less heart than the best Disney projects.

Visually, Sleeping Beauty leans into an angular style that feels totally distinct from anything the Mouse House had done before. After a decade of soft, rounded animation aesthetics, artistic director Eyvind Earle took inspiration from Medieval tapestries and illuminated manuscripts, as well as geometric modern art trends to create something sharper and more striking. The movie is filled with impressively defined jawlines and quirky pointed noises. And there are bright, bold colors you just don’t see elsewhere in the Disney animated canon—including a shade of hot pink that’s quite different than the softer color that would become Aurora’s signature in merchandising and theme parks. (Although I’m with Merryweather, the blue looks better on her.)

As with Snow White and Cinderella, I find Aurora’s character design appealing in that sort of Barbie-doll style way (I love her cascading head of curls). But either because of the new art style or just because of her role as more of a supporting player, she’s lacking the same sense of personality as her royal counterparts. It’s not just that she doesn’t get much to do narratively, it’s that there’s no specificity to the way she interacts with her animal friends or caretakers. Where Snow’s dynamic with the dwarfs and Cinderella’s friendship with the mice feel lived-in, all of Aurora’s relationships are pretty generic.

Ironically, however, she’s the first Disney heroine to get a prince with an actual personality. Prince Phillip has a more contemporary sense of gumption than the bland princes that came before him. He defends his right to marry a peasant for love and even gets some charming comedic moments with his steed Samson—an early entry in Disney’s long line of iconic horses. Personally, I think Phillip is the hottest of all the Disney princes. (Sorry Flynn Rider.) But he’s also a bit of a “be careful what you wish for” scenario too. By introducing him earlier in the story and making him more of an active character, Phillip ultimately winds up getting more screentime and personality than Aurora herself.

Still, as I mentioned before, this is ultimately a movie about four fairies and the way they meddle in the lives of the boring humans around them. And that’s where I think the film’s winking, almost meta-approach comes into play. Where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella offered stepmother villains motivated by personal jealousy, Maleficent just goes full evil over a party invitation. On this viewing, I laughed out loud at how she crashes Aurora’s christening, confirms they didn’t invite her on purpose, claims she’s not upset, and then curses the baby to die at 16. It’s such a hilariously over-the-top reaction, it’s no wonder Maleficent is considered one of the most iconic divas in the Disney villain canon.

If anything, though, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are underrated divas in their own right too. We’re so trained to see their fairy godmother archetypes as supporting characters that I think some people genuinely watch this movie without being able to comprehend the fact that the trio of fairies are our central heroes—the ones we follow from beginning to end. In fact, I had even misremembered the movie’s climax as one where Phillip alone defeats Maleficent in her dragon form. In actuality, however, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are there every step of the way, using their magic to turn obstacles into bubbles and flowers, and enchanting his sword for the killing blow. They’re active action heroines in a way we honestly wouldn’t see again in a Disney princess film until Mulan in the late ’90s.

And what’s great about Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather is that they’re basically the anti-Disney princess, not just in how they look but in how they act too. Where Snow White and Cinderella offered long scenes of their heroines happily cooking, cleaning, and sewing, Sleeping Beauty has a hilarious sequence all about how terrible the fairies are at traditional “womanly” activities. Fauna is so inexperienced at cooking she folds whole eggs—shell and all—into her cake batter. And Flora begins her dress-making process by cutting a giant hole “for the feet to go through.” It's full-on Amelia Bedelia antics, and a pretty hilarious send-up of the idea that all women are just innately good at domestic tasks. (Or that domestic tasks are just innately easy.)

The three fairies also get all the specific personality quirks that Aurora is lacking too. Flora is bossy, Fauna is a peacemaker, and Merryweather is a curmudgeon who more often than not is right about everything. While Flora and Fauna try to think through how to reason with Maleficent, Merryweather huffs, “I’d like to turn her into a fat, ole hoptoad.” When they remind her they can only use their magic to bring joy and happiness, she replies, “Well, that would make me happy.”

While it’s a shame the movie doesn’t do much to explore Aurora’s relationship with her three maternal figures, the fairies still make for a welcome trio of funny, likable, distinct female characters. They may not fit our idea of what a “Disney heroine” looks like, but they’re unquestionably the heroines of this film. And while I don’t think the Disney animators intentionally set out to empower middle-aged women, they did set out to mix up the Disney princess formula. In doing so, they stumbled upon a premise more progressive than half of what we get from the studio today.

At the time, however, the more muted response to Sleeping Beauty was enough to shift Disney’s focus away from animation. The studio moved to a cheaper “Xerox process” for films like One Hundred and One Dalmatian, The Jungle Book, and Robin Hood in the ’60s and ’70s before all but losing their voice in the “dark ages” of the 1980s. Thirty years after Sleeping Beauty’s debut, it would take a return to the classic princess formula to bring Walt Disney Animation roaring back to life. But Disney’s meta interrogation of its own princess formula began well before Ariel splashed us into a new era.

Together, these first three classic Disney princess films gave us three endearing young royals, three iconic female villains, and half a dozen other recognizable female characters to boot—a feat that few of the Renaissance-era Disney films can match. Though Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora are often remembered as the stepping stones for the more empowered princesses to come, they laid groundwork with more depth than they’re given credit for.

Next time: The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance with a new type of princess

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